A new and successful format: World-Café as a part of LightMAT-congress

For the first time Prof. Dr. Christoph Leyens implemented a new innovative and successfull platforma for discussions at the LightMat-conference. Part of conference participants discussed topical issues and trends from the field of Materials Science and Engineering.

Based on the hugely positive feedback and response, the world-Cafe will become a regular part of LightMAT-conference in the future.

Which manufacturing processes are driving forces for light weight innovations?

Research founding: Is the founding and promotion of light weight design sufficient?

To question 1: In discussions, there seems to be a kind of competition between the different material classes, and many materials belong to a certain industry, e.g. Titanium to the aerospace industry of medical industry due to the biocompatibility. There was a consensus on the fact, that weight reduction is very important in particular to the mobility sector. However, the requirements and boundary conditions define the utilized materials as well as the cost factor.

To question 2: A short debate about the spark plasma sintering technique was held, but once again unity was given by a conversation about additive manufacturing processes with their advantages and requirements. To improve and drive innovations for processing routs in industry hybrid manufacturing processes of the combination of different manufacturing processes including AM in a continues production route need to be developed and implemented respectively.

To question 3: It seems that the general founding situation is good and large-scale projects as the Materials Genome Initiative, Metallurgy Europe, … help to promote MSE – Materials Science and Engineering. However, “fancy materials” have a higher priority compare to traditional materials a light weight metals so instance.

The interdisciplinary MSE community need to unite to overcome a critical mass to become visible. Here, hot topics as additive manufacturing, digitalization (digital twin), big data science, and computational materials science as well as high throughput techniques support the need of materials and could be used to gain founding and importance.